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We are just three days away from Thanksgiving, the start of a month-long food extravaganza. The whole term “holiday weight” refers to the weight gained over the next month between Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. It is quite a wonderful time of year for everything but your wallet and your waistline.

However, I have survived the past 2 years without any weight gain during the holidays so I am here to assure you that it can be done and you can steal drink eggnog.

I am telling you what has worked for me. Everyone’s metabolism is different, so you need to do what works for you, but just take my advice as some simple guidelines.

For Thanksgiving, I eat what I want on that actual day. In my family, we have prime rib and chocolate cake, not turkey and pumpkin pie. I completely indulge on Thanksgiving. I eat seconds and even thirds. I what I want, and I absolutely do not feeling at all guilty about it. It’s because I’m good the majority of the year and work out hard that I can take a day like that to party.

However, no matter what, the one thing I make sure I do on Thanksgiving is go for a big walk before the big food showdown. I try to clock around 3 miles. I go with my dad, and it’s great. I look forward to it every year. We take time to bond and talk and enjoy the loveliness of the day. It’s one of the things I’m thankful for. So I would say, get some exercise that day. Many gyms are closed, but that’s such an isolated activity anyway. Go for walk or run with a friend or family member. Sign up for a turkey trot 5K with a group. Play a game of touch football with the family in the backyard. If you have snow, have a big snowball fight with your gang. Do something to be active and share the day with the special people in your life.

Then chow down. Seriously. Although they preach it, I honestly don’t believe that people like Biggest Loser’s Bob and Jillian eat tofu on Thanksgiving. They say they do, but seriously, who does that? So indulge and enjoy on Thanksgiving. Don’t feel guilty about it.

Here’s the kicker though…the day after, go back to your normal, healthy habits. You’re done until Christmas. You had your one day of uninhibited bliss. Oh and the day before Thanksgiving, be good too. Just follow your normal healthy food plan and exercise plan all week, but give yourself the day. It’s not what you do once in a while that causes serious weight/health problems. It’s what you do everyday that matters.

In terms of battling the bulge against the endless baked goods that pop up in the mail from grandma and at the office break room, there’s a way I deal with that too. I love baked goods, especially cookies. And I have a serious, serious obsession with eggnog ice cream. So when baked goods start piling into the office, I pick my favorites and I have just one thing. One cookie, one piece of Godiva candy. I make sure to record it in my food journal and cut back a bit on a meal or a snack.

I only eat the really good stuff though. I don’t eat what’s there because it’s there. I wait for only the stuff that is worth it. And as soon as I take my one thing, I immediately leave the break room so I’m not tempted for more. At home, I have one or two of my mom’s cookies, seal the tin and put it back in the fridge. I leave the room. I try to work out extra during the holidays, but sometimes it’s hard because so much is going on. But I try.

My final indulgence is the Culver’s Egg Nog Concrete Mixer. A small one has nearly 900 calories. Yes, seriously. It really truly does, but to me, it is the greatest thing in the world and it only comes once a year. So I honestly plot out one day between Thanksgiving and Christmas to eat one. I try to make sure it’s not the day after my holiday party at work where I know I will have eaten a lot. I find an isolated day not surrounded by other overeating and I go and get it. I eat the whole thing, and I seriously don’t care.

I’m usually in a severe coma from such a heavy thing that I don’t even work out that day. But, I only allow myself one during the Christmas season, so why worry about it? Once a year, I’m going to have it.

And finally, as this post is quite long, I follow the same rule on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day that I do for Thanksgiving. Eat what I want, try to get a good, solid walk in and go back to my normal healthy habits the day after.

4 Responses to “Skinny Pink Ninja’s Guide to Holiday Weight”

I so agree with you on eating healthy (normal) the day before the Festive day and then after that again. When I was not on the healthy path, I used to start eating unhealthy a week before and a week after the Festive day. So that clocks 2 weeks about of unhealthy eating.
Nowaday, I eat normal (healthy) and just splurge on the Festive day itself and go back to normal again after that particular day.

That is the way to go. Frankly now that I do eat healthy the majority of the time, one day is about all I can take anyway. I feel kind of gross after that and long to go back to salads! Strange how our tastes change!

Definitely do the walk before because the food you eat afterward will help refuel what you burned off. Granted, we all know that we are all going to eat far more than we burn off, but hey it’s better than doing nothing all day!